Beauty & Essex Has Gorilla-Sized Bone Marrow, Toasters: Review

Tamales at Beauty and Essex restaurant in New York. Photographer: Paul Goguen/Bloomberg

April 13 (Bloomberg) -- Women are poured free bubbly in the
restrooms while Jamie Foxx’s “Blame It (On the Alcohol)” pipes
through the sound system.

Welcome to Beauty & Essex on Manhattan’s Lower East Side,
which so far has not stocked the men’s room. Buy yourself an $85
bottle of Paul Laurent; the citrusy sparkler is just one of two
champagnes under $100.

Such are the expensive ways and means at this stadium-sized
eatery and urban wildlife scene.

Call up on Friday and get offered a midnight reservation. A
door lady guards the entrance with an iPad, the official
clipboard of 2011. Guests walk through a pawn shop (items are
$75-$795) and pass by a trap door to reach the 280-seat
restaurant.

There are six hosts. Two of them wear Secret Service ear
sets, which is why they’re not really paying attention. You’re
given a belt-clip beeper while you wait. How 1980s.

Beauty is at least more tolerable -- especially in a booth
-- than such other noisy, crowed venues as Tao, Lavo, Buddakan
and The Hurricane Club.

Cute Canapes

Here he gives us small plates and “toasts,” which cynics
will call open-faced sliders. Beef tartare, full of mustardy
tang, becomes a cute canape. Same goes for tomato tartare,
anointed with a quail egg. Then there are wan slices of soggy
flatbread pizza, heady chicken liver crostini, and gorilla-sized
slabs of rib-sticking bone marrow for smearing.

Eat salad with your hands. Each meal begins with a cool,
crisp Caesar on a single tiny crouton. That’s the amuse. The
petits fours are free match boxes, put to frequent use outside.

Jellyfish-shaped chandeliers and the occasional birthday
candle keep the affair dark. The phosphorescence of BlackBerries
illuminates the menu, largely an Epcot World Showcase of
multiethnic finger food -- even soup is taken out of its bowl
and transformed into a lobster bisque dumpling.

Utensils are minimized. Can diners really be expected to
cut steak while canoodling in a booth? So stick your fork into a
$48 strip of pre-sliced, mineral-tinged ribeye and feed your
emaciated companion.

Club Cuisine

Eat Japanese. That country is represented well with Kobe
carpaccio; a preparation that wouldn’t be out of place at Jean
Georges. Streaks of white fat melt in the mouth; crunchy wontons
and nori add MSG-style savor. The ingredients are clear because
waiters take care to describe each element -- an uncommon
gesture for club cuisine.

China’s best entry comes with salt and pepper shrimp. Quell
the blast of heat and shock of sodium with a glass of Riesling
(Rudi Wiest -- $13). General Tso’s monkfish, a failed update of
the poultry version of takeout infamy, involves jolting up a
bland protein with a crispy coating of sweet and sour sauce.

Italy gets an estimable nod to Emilia-Romagna. A slick of
spicy veal Bolognese is all that firm garganelli needs to shine;
rigatoni with lamb sausage and mint is an addictive Sicilian
homage to North Africa. Then mosey on to the Cote d’Azur for
flaky branzino with pommes puree. Spain gets its smoky due via
chorizo-topped raw tuna.

Short rib tamales honor Mexico; the oblong batons balance
the silk of lard and grit of corn. Lobster tacos? The kitchen
takes the delicate shellfish and deep fries the flavor away.

Santos gets things right with America. Try the fluffy
chicken meatballs, then follow up with a hamburger whose wallop
of flavor comes from a musty, salty swath of goat feta.

Skip the tiny Italian affogato shots for dessert or the
leaden French macarons. Feast on our country’s own junk food
with an impossibly high cake of moist chocolate and dense
mascarpone cream. Call it a Napoleon of Devil Dogs.

Young Oldsters

Burn off those calories at the second-floor lounge and
dance. Watch stiletto-clad patrons navigating the staircases as
if they’re mountains to be scaled, grasping the banisters like
premature octogenarians. Rating: **